


The Bug Girl

by Lyric_Hartwell



Series: Loam is Where the Heart is [5]
Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Ohio Worms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-20 21:20:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30011091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyric_Hartwell/pseuds/Lyric_Hartwell
Series: Loam is Where the Heart is [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2201349
Kudos: 2





	The Bug Girl

As it turns out, if you claim to speak to bugs, most folks who think of themselves as being normal will turn their backs on you. The good news is that at least for Enid Marlow, she’d never given much care for what normal people thought of her. 

Ever since she was little Enid heard the thoughts of bugs. When she would help her moms with the gardening she’d hear dozens of small voices from beneath the soil. She would try to save them from the terror of the trowels, and any that crawled above the ground she would chat with before they descended back below. 

They were a clever little kid, and picked up pretty quickly that while her moms humored her, neither of them actually believed her. She didn’t see much point in trying to convince, but she didn’t really see much point in hiding it either. Even at school during recess, when other kids would make fun of her, she maintained the same attitude. She wasted no effort in trying to convince them, but she wouldn’t be pushed to hide it either. Inside, they simply took solace in making friends with the bugs instead.

Spiders would nest in her hair and travel with her, gossiping among themselves while Enid laughed at their stories. At night she’d say hello to the moths who gathered by the porch light. And of course, in the garden while she helped her moms, she would always take the time to say hello to the worms, and ask them how it's wriggling. 

They didn't mind if they were normal, or if they had humanoid friends. They were happy enough living their life how they wanted, and no one else interfered in that.

Things got a little more difficult when it became undeniably clear she wasn't human.

Along with all the other travails of growing up as a teenage girl-adjacent person, Enid had to deal with a few new, inhuman limbs. Antennae and dragonfly wings soon turned her from the girl who talked to bugs, to the bug girl.

As far as Enid was concerned it was a marked improvement. The antennae gave her senses beyond a human's, and her wings were just enough to give her a taste of flight, at the very least a remarkably effective form of gliding. She was happy, and her family didn't make a fuss about it, so what was there to worry about?

Visibility, however, can be quite the curse. Behaviors are easier for bullies to ignore than appearances. Enid always thought of herself as having a thick skin when it came to that kind of stuff, but after a while it can wear a person down.

She learned to keep her head low, not even try to make friends. Stay by yourself, and you'll be safe. She still had her bug friends, but they didn’t have the frame of reference to help her with the social pressure that now permeated her life.

Still, she made it through. College was a little better than highschool, a time to heal. She actually made a few friends, met her first girlfriend. She still didn’t feel normal, but they didn’t want to feel normal, just okay. Once they got to okay, they’d focus on the next step of getting back to being happy.

Enid had never really been into splorts, but after a while she was floundering for something to do with her life, and she thought that maybe… Being on a team with people like her, folks who weren’t really normal, being on a team that would maybe welcome a weird bug girl like her. Well, it might be worth a shot. And to her surprise, her life went from okay to happy very quickly after that.


End file.
